Central High School - Booster Yearbook (La Crosse, WI)

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Hamlin Garland SEVENTY-FIVE years ago there was born near here Wisconsin's greatest historian and biographer, Hamlin Garland. For forty-five years his publications, which now number over thirty, have been favorites in the United States and in Europe. He has filled his books with the spirit of pioneering and hardship. His mother and father who came West in a covered wagon knew real trials and troubles. Their spirit is reflected in several books included in our high school reading list. His parents, immediately after their marriage, settled on a farm in Green's Coulee. However, Hamlin Garland was not born in the Coulee, as is commonly believed, but in a small log cabin halfway between West Salem and the County, Asylum. His birthplace is no longer standing. The family moved to Iowa in 1868, when he was nine years old, but he tells us much of his joyous times in Green's, Coulee and in the boom-town of Onalaska. We all have a great interest in him as a boy from. our own locality. Although for many years he lived elsewhere, he made numerous journeys to our Coulee Country and kept in close contact with our region. In 1893 he bought the Old Homestead, the familiar green, rambling house in West Salem. This residence, surrounded by tall elms and stately manles, served as a haven for his mother until her death. From this time on, he was seldom gone long from his mother's side. The only times he broke his vigil were in 1898, when he spent half a year in the Yukon, and in 1899, when he married Zulime Taft, Lorado Taft's sister. But since 1916, when he established residence in New York and later in Hollywood, he has seldom visited his old haunts. Little remains for him of the Middle Border except the memory. His mother and father lie at rest in the small cemetery at Neshonoc, and there his heart often wanders as he thinks of that staunch couple, the Htrailmakers of the Middle Border. The later years of his life have been marked with honor. In 1918 he was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1921 he gained the coveted Pulitzer Prize for biography with his A Daughter of the Middle Border. In this book, in which he has portrayed his mother as the Daughter of the Middle Border and his wife as the New Daughter, he has drawn his most vivid pictures of West Salem life. Several universities have honored him, and in June, 1926, the University of Wisconsin conferred upon Hamlin Garland, a native son of La Crosse County, the highest literary honor, the degree of Doctor of Letters. Professor Frederick Logan Paxson at that time said: Fiction is often the truest history. He has done something with history and formal biography as such, but what we value today, and what our children will value in years to come is his verisimilitude to life. His writings are works of art, but they are also documents that may become the source of history g for the contemporary portraiture of a people by itself has a value in interpretation that goes beyond the literary values of the stories.

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WW ,H WW if-Q if Wfilffffw fy ku? 1 ,fffrggwf . 1 -r w u 3' , 3 Qi 31323 E respectfully dedxcate th1s 1936 Booster to a i Qi County

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4,f,f,f9fJZ gyda iff M ,Za Foreword N presenting this book to you, we are attempting to do as Hamlin Garland has done-write history. just as he has portrayed the lives of mid-western pioneers, we are striving to give an accurate, concise picture of Central High School today. Hamlin Harland's life is definitely linked with ours. He walked and rode where we walk and ride. Scenes that were familiar to him are familiar to us. To show how well he knew and appreciated the beauty of our region, we are quoting, in ourlopening pages, from three of his books that have immortalized our locality- A Son of the Middle Border, A Daughter of the Middle Border, and Trail- malcers of the Middle Border.